cup of the nut brown for thyself, my boy."

Conachar poured out the good liquor for his master and for Catharine
with due observance. But that done, he set the flagon on the table and
sat down.

"How now, sirrah! be these your manners? Fill to my guest, the
worshipful Master Henry Smith."

"Master Smith may fill for himself, if he wishes for liquor," answered
the youthful Celt. "The son of my father has demeaned himself enough
already for one evening."

"That's well crowed for a cockerel," said Henry; "but thou art so far
right, my lad, that the man deserves to die of thirst who will not drink
without a cupbearer."

But his entertainer took not the contumacy of the young apprentice with
so much patience. "Now, by my honest word, and by the best glove I ever
made," said Simon, "thou shalt help him with liquor from that cup and
flagon, if thee and I are to abide under one roof."

Conachar arose sullenly upon hearing this threat, and, approaching the
smith, who had just taken the tankard in his hand, and was raising it
to his head, he contrived to stumble against him and jostle him so
awkwardly, that the foaming ale gushed over his face, person, and dress.
Good natured as the smith, in spite of his warlike propensities, really
was in the utmost degree, his patience failed under such a provocation.
He seized the young man's throat, being the part which came readiest to
his grasp, as Conachar arose from the pretended stumble, and pressing
it severely as he cast the lad from him, exclaimed: "Had this been in
another place, young gallows bird, I had stowed the lugs out of thy
head, as I have done to some of thy clan before thee."

Conachar recovered his feet with the activity of a tiger, and exclaimed:
"Never shall you live to make that boast again!" drew a short, sharp
knife from his bosom, and, springing on Henry Smith, attempted to plunge
it into his body over the collarbone, which must have been a mortal
wound. But the object of this violence was so ready to defend himself
by striking up the assailant's hand, that the blow only glanced on the
bone, and scarce drew blood. To wrench the dagger from the boy's hand,
and to secure him with a grasp like that of his own iron vice, was, for
the powerful smith, the work of a single moment.

Conachar felt himself at once in the absolute power of the formidable
antagonist whom he had provoked; he became deadly pale, as he had been
the moment before glowing red, and stood mut